Plagiarism is a hot topic these days. Figures such as President Vladimir Putin and author Dan Brown ("The Da Vinci Code") were recently accused of stealing ideas or copying material from other people's works. Now, Mikhail Shishkin, one of Russia's most prominent living writers, has been accused of plagiarism in his award-winning novel "Maidenhair" (Venerin Volos).

The charge surfaced in an article in Literaturnaya Gazeta by poet Alexander Tankov, who quoted a passage from Shishkin's novel -- supposedly a fragment of the memoirs of a Soviet diva -- and a passage from the memoirs of Vera Panova, a once-popular writer. Beyond any reasonable doubt, Shishkin's text was based on Panova's, with only minor changes to names and epithets.

The story was soon noticed by Internet users, especially on the popular blogging site LiveJournal. Among Shishkin's most vocal critics was another man of letters, Alexei Tsvetkov, one of the finest poets of the older generation. Tsvetkov called Shishkin a thief, while also admitting that he had never read his books. Many supported the accusations; others vigorously refuted them, saying that a postmodernist author was free to choose his "building blocks."

In response, Shishkin wrote a letter to a friend with permission to distribute it freely. The friend posted the letter in his blog, and within hours, it was the most-quoted text of the day. The gist of Shishkin's rebuttal boiled down to admitting he had used Panova's memoirs, but claiming that all of his texts were quilts made of other people's material. (Indeed, readers quickly found parts of "Maidenhair" taken almost verbatim from Xenophon's "Anabasis.")

The tone of Shishkin's letter struck many as arrogant -- "I write the literature of the next generation," he stated -- but it also led to much misunderstanding. One phrase in particular deserves closer scrutiny. Shishkin wrote, "They are judging my texts as if they were theirs, which is like trying to judge intergalactic forces by the fall of an apple." If you ask me, there is nothing remotely condescending or insulting in this passage; Shishkin is merely saying that his prose is different, just as Einsteinian physics was different from (not better than) Newtonian physics.

I'm sure Shishkin foresaw the reaction to his letter and peppered it with ambiguous statements on purpose. Which only confirms his reputation as a provocative author who lives by his own laws.